The Dirt (72 page)

I
’m supposed to go into the studio in a couple of weeks and I have a contract with [Sylvia Rhone] and she won’t give me my money. I don’t understand. She’s fucking the fans, she’s fucking herself, and she’s fucking me. I have four kids, a wife. I have house payments, car payments. I have a life. I fucking earned the right to have one of the biggest contracts in rock and roll. I don’t need to be fucked with by somebody who has her opinion and her priorities. Is she a racist? Is she anti-man? What’s her problem? We can’t figure it out because she’s had a hard-on for us since day one. Well, you know what, motherfucker? You’ve got a contract and if you want to go up against this band we are a loose cannon. I will make your life miserable
.

—Nikki Sixx, quoted in
Spin,
March 1998

Anyone who saw the less-than-flattering comments that Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx made about the Elektra Entertainment Group and its chairman, Sylvia Rhone, in the March issue of
Spin
will not be surprised to hear that the band and the record label have parted company. Sources said that Mötley Crüe, which spent fifteen years on Elektra and sold more than 35 million albums, is looking into alternative means of distributing its catalog material. The band, which gave birth to glam metal with its 1982 album
Too Fast for Love,
is heading into the studio next month to record new songs
.

—The Music Daily,
April 16, 1998

Mötley Crüe is set to raise its middle digit to the world once more. This time the vehicle is called
Greatest Hits
and the wheels have already begun to burn a bit of rubber across a very limp and lifeless music industry. Elektra records has been cast aside in favor of the Mötleys’ own label and distribution network. An international tour of theaters and arenas to support the release is currently being planned and Tommy is, finally, out of jail! Things, as they say, are about to happen
.

—Sound420.com, August 1998

M
y friend Bob Procop, who owned a diamond store on Rodeo Drive, picked me up from jail in his big crazy-assed Bentley. “What’s the first thing you want to do?” he asked.

“Dude, I want a cigarette so fucking bad. And then would you be so kind as to take me to your beach house.”

We cruised down the freeway: traffic was zipping by on all sides. After almost four months in solitary, it was too much stimulation for me. I smoked an American Spirit and closed my eyes to keep from throwing up all over the car.

Bob brought me to his house in Marina del Rey, right on the water. He filled his Jacuzzi with half a box of bubble bath and said, “It’s all yours, bro.” I ripped my fucking clothes off, jumped in, tilted my head back, and just sat there for two hours, gazing at the stars. I had forgotten what it felt like to be immersed in actual, as opposed to metaphorical, hot water. It was the greatest luxury in the world.

At about 4
A.M.
, I asked him to take me home. I missed my house and my bed. Pamela and the kids had moved out, so it was quiet and empty, with the toys and furniture mostly gone. I stumbled through the darkness to the bed where Brandon was born and fell asleep for two days straight. It was always hard to sleep in jail because of all the walking and talking and crashing and banging reverberating off the concrete walls.

When I woke up, my house was full of people. All these dudes had come over to welcome me home. They were kissing me and hugging me and slapping me on the back. But I was so unused to being around people that I didn’t know what to say. I smiled, but inside I wanted to crawl under a rock and hide. It had been so long since another person had treated me with anything other than hostility and suspicion. It was too soon for me to laugh and be happy and carefree. I was still in a lot of pain.

I asked the court for permission to go to Hawaii and fucking marinate. I brought Scott Humphrey along and sat on the beach and did nothing until I slowly returned to Planet Earth. I relearned how to interact with people, and, eventually, the smile came back. I didn’t have to fake it anymore. But the world wasn’t the same as when I had left it. Everyone looked at me differently now: people would pass by and whisper, “There’s that fucking wife beater.” I was really ashamed of myself, and it took a while to realize that the whole world wasn’t against me.

The other thing that had changed was that Pamela had made sure she finalized the divorce before my release. My family life, which had given me my greatest happiness and misery, seemed completely over. I couldn’t figure out why she would do that to me and the children. But it was clear that, despite all the letters and phone calls, she didn’t want anything to do with me. There was no chance of reconciliation, especially with her dating Kelly fucking Slater. That little turn of events combined with the fact that I heard that she had changed her wedding band tattoo from Tommy to Mommy upset me so much that I later had my wedding tattoo removed. I just wanted to get that shit off my finger and change my life. I had to become a single dad, something I had never wanted to be. My parents had stayed together my whole life. My dad, who was seventy-four, was now ill with myeloma and cancer in his bloodstream. My mom, who was much younger, spent every day and night taking care of him. I wanted somebody in my life to do that for me, and I wanted somebody I could do that for. What made being a single father the worst, though, was that I wasn’t allowed to fucking see my children without a court-appointed monitor there to supervise me. I felt so bad for Dylan and Brandon, because they had no idea who these people were and what was going on.

When I returned home from Hawaii, I put my blinders on, locked the doors, and pulled out all the notes and answering-machine tapes I had made in jail. I invited over this filthy little rapper street kid named TiLo, who I had met when his old band, hed (pe), was opening for Mötley Crüe on the
Swine
tour. And we started working on our own project, Methods of Mayhem. I buried myself in work, going at it every minute until four or five in the morning, and reaching out to everyone I had always wanted to work with.

On my birthday, some friends threw a party for me because I hadn’t kicked back and relaxed in months. Someone invited Carmen Electra, and we met and started bullshitting. She had married Dennis Rodman four months ago, but they were already, for all practical purposes, separated. I talked to her on the phone a few times and, two weeks later, just as I was about to hit the road with Mötley for our
Greatest Hits
tour, we started dating. She would tell Rodman, who she claimed she had caught cheating on her with two women simultaneously, that she was going to visit sick grandmothers and shit while she sneaked off on the road with us. We had to smuggle her in and out of shows and hotels so that the tabloids didn’t get hold of the information and have a field day. We were both refugees from the two fucking craziest celebrity insta-marriages of the year. Plus, when Pamela left
Baywatch
for her own
V.I.P
. series, Carmen was hired as her replacement.

Dennis Rodman had filed for divorce, but that didn’t mean he wanted someone else dating her. So he started stalking the band and showing up at shows. We had to order security guards to keep him out by any means necessary. And funnily enough, though I had been trying ever since my release from prison to get Pamela to talk or meet with me, as soon as word leaked out that I was dating Carmen, she mysteriously started calling again.

EXCEPT FOR THE VISITS FROM CARMEN RODMAN, I kept to myself during the Mötley tour. I took my whole studio on the road and, after every gig, holed up in my room and worked on Pro-Tools. I figured if I wrote nonstop, I’d have the Methods of Mayhem record done by the time I came home. Besides, it kept me from getting into any more trouble. In every city, I’d have to find a lab and pee in a cup before each show. And all day I’d be on the phone with probation officers and anger-management counselors and therapists and gurus. With my strict probation, it was like I was still in handcuffs. I couldn’t go to restaurants, grocery stores, gas stations—anywhere that sold alcohol except, of course, the venues we played in.

With each show, it became harder for me to play our greatest hits onstage. While I was out there playing “Girls, Girls, Girls” for the ten thousandth time, all I could think about was getting back to my room and finishing whatever song I was working on. I was much happier on the Corabi tour. Even though no one was at the damn shows, at least I was doing something that fulfilled me. I had always told myself that when my heart wasn’t in it, it was time to quit. And my heart wasn’t in it.

Nikki, however, was just as enthusiastic about Mötley Crüe as he was on the day we started the band in his old girlfriend’s home in North Hollywood, with me jamming on the fucking table while he sold lightbulbs on the phone. With the band back on its own independent label, he felt like he was in control of his own destiny and Mötley Crüe could take over the world again. I think he fucking thought that I would come around and see things his way, and stay in Mötley Crüe while releasing
Methods of Mayhem
as a side project. But if I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it 100 percent. And I couldn’t give Methods of Mayhem
and
Mötley Crüe 100 percent, especially after Vince sucker-punched me.

We were at the Las Vegas airport heading back to Los Angeles after another leg of the never-ending
Greatest Hits
tour. Vince was highly intoxicated and, as usual, no fun to be around.

I was standing at the ticket counter talking with Ashley, who worked for our record company and was taking care of our seats, when Vince walked up all shitty drunk and slurred, “Give me my fucking boarding pass, Ashley. You can kiss Tommy’s ass later.”

Dude, I had no idea where all that fucking hostility came from. I guess I hadn’t been happy since he rejoined the band. And, sure, he wasn’t my favorite dude on the planet. But I never did anything fucking mean to that guy. He just has so much pain bottled up that he doesn’t share with anyone, and, dude, I feel that. But when he said that shit in the airport, it didn’t put me in a very sympathetic mood.

“What did you just say?”

“You fucking heard me,” he swaggered drunkenly.

“Dude, what the fuck is wrong with you!”

“Fuck you!”

“Fuck me? Fuck you, bro!”

And we were off in one of those shitty little fights that weren’t so rare with us. “No, fuck you, you fucking poser piece of shit,” Vince bullied as he pushed his puffy face against mine. “What are you going to do? Hit me?”

He knew damn well that I was on probation, and he tried everything he could to get me to violate it by kicking the shit out of him. I refused to take the bait, putting my anger management training to use. “Look, dude,” I said. “I’m not going to fucking hit you. You need to calm down, big guy. Let’s just forget about it and take it easy.”

Then, out of nowhere, he fucking clocked me on the jaw. And when you get hit like that, suddenly anger management goes out the window and your animal defense system kicks in. My immediate reaction was to fucking kill. Even though I’d just had assault charges and prison and counselors up the ass, I couldn’t help it. Here was this asshole coming out of nowhere and getting up in my shit. I fucking tackled him, knocked him to the ground, and cocked my arm to send this smug shithead to the hospital. I did not give a fuck. Send me back to jail. Fine. But my fist was going to have a band meeting with Vince’s face first.

Suddenly, Chris, our security guard, dove on me. He was under strict orders to make sure I didn’t get in any trouble, and it was his ass if I was sent back to prison. He pulled me off Vince and said, “Tommy, get on the plane and get the fuck out of here. Now!”

As I turned to walk to the gate, Vince stood up and screamed at the top of his lungs for airport security. “Police! Police! I’ve been assaulted.” The fucking guy had just sucker-punched me, and now he was trying to get me arrested and put back in prison. It would have been ten years on ice if I was arrested. You just don’t do that to another human being—especially your bandmate—no matter how pissed you are.

I ran onto the plane and said to Nikki, “Bro, I am out of here. You will not see me tomorrow. You will not see me the next day. You guys had better find yourselves another drummer. This tour is over!”